Winning in the API Economy: New Guide Launched at API Strategy and Practice

To coincide with the start of the API Strategy and Practice Conference today, API management platform 3scale has released a new ebook targeting business leaders looking to understand the commercial advantage of an API business strategy. The ebook, Winning in the API Economy discusses how software is becoming central to any enterprise's business processes, resulting in the need for API integration to play a major role when mapping out efficiencies and productivity gains for any business workflow or for the entry into new markets. The ebook also gives a nod to how APIs are driving innovation, and provides case studies from key business brands and API providers, including several who will be presenting at API Strategy and Conference, which kicks off today through Friday at Parc55 in San Francisco. CEO of 3scale, Steve Willmott, told ProgrammableWeb this morning, that there is a changing dynamic between how business leaders are communicating with their in-house developer teams:

"I would say first of all [there is a] pressure for agility - especially in customer facing apps which are often driven by marketing needs - there is a need to innovate, iterate and deploy faster. Spending is also increasingly being directed by those marketing needs - as a result, in-house development teams are having to be more reactive to fast moving events. "There is also another dynamic which is that APIs combined with [integration-platform-as-a-service] tools are making it easier for marketing and sales teams to write simple scripts (e.g. "if customer raises a Zendesk ticket, ping that into Salesforce"). This unburdens development teams from having to do this in custom code."

The integral role of software - often cloud-based - across business processes also means it is business leaders, including those at the C-level, that are identifying the need for API-enabled solutions:

"From what we see it is typically strategy driven, particular in big organizations. Companies are seeing pressure from partners for integration or from the cost of supporting many data channels, and are looking to rationalize these. That then filters down to decisions on how to structure internal systems and outward facing projects. Ultimately, the engineering organization needs to sign off also, since there are important security, scalability and other considerations involved."

The ebook can be downloaded for free online. API Strategy and Conference commences this afternoon and continues through til Friday, October 25. Live streaming of sessions will be available on ProgrammableWeb.

About the author:Mark Boyd
is a ProgrammableWeb writer covering breaking news, API business strategies and models, open data, and smart cities.
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